Acme Packing Company
So far in training camp, the Packers haven’t really had a breakout player on offense. The Matthew Golden hype has been real, but he was a first round pick less than six months ago. It should be real.
Outside of that, though, the only player really making a run from obscurity to prominence is tight end John FitzPatrick, and his ascendance has been a long time coming.
The Packers have had interest in FitzPatrick for quite a while. In 2022, the Georgia tight end was one of the Packers’ 30 pre-draft visits. That’s about as clear a sign as it gets that the Packers were interested in him that year, given their historical track record when it comes to drafting guys they’ve had in for visits.
FitzPatrick was ultimately selected by the Atlanta Falcons with the 213th pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. As a fun little historical aside, the Packers would have had a very real shot at drafting FitzPatrick but for one thing: they traded their 2022 sixth round pick prior to the 2021 season, sending it to the Houston Texans for Randall Cobb as a means of placating Aaron Rodgers. Since that point, Brian Gutekunst has signed or claimed three players that would have been on the board at pick 205: Luke Tenuta (209 to Buffalo), FitzPatrick, and Lecitus Smith (215 to Arizona). Brian Gutekunst certainly loves his day three picks, even ones that he didn’t actually make.
FitzPatrick has good size (6-foot-7 and 249 pounds at draft time; he’s now listed at 262 pounds), but wasn’t particularly productive at college. He only caught 17 passes as a Georgia Bulldog, but he did average a solid 11.8 yards per catch. He was also a member of Georgia’s 2021 national championship team, playing through stress fractures in both feet that season according to reporting from The Athletic. He’d have surgery after the season.
At his pro day, he told writer Seth Emerson he didn’t get surgery earlier because he “wanted to play.”
“If I can ever play through an injury I’m going to,” he said. “It definitely slowed me down. I couldn’t run the way I wanted to or cut. It affected my game in a lot of ways. But I was fine as long as I could be on the field.”
Ultimately, FitzPatrick did have two surgeries prior to the 2022 season but was back in time for training camp. Unfortunately, his foot injuries still derailed his rookie year, and he ended up on injured reserve despite playing in two of the Falcons’ preseason games.
He’d rally for the 2023 season, appearing in nine games for the Falcons, playing primarily on special teams. He stuck around in Atlanta for the start of the 2024 season, holding down a spot on the practice squad, but was ultimately signed by the Packers midway through the year. He’d play in nine regular season games for the Packers, mainly in a small but growing role on special teams, though he did...
